I wanted to name this "Why do Christians need prejudice?", but I felt that the inherent presumption in that question might be too offensive and certainly would not always be true. There are many, many Christians who do not resemble the type I'm describing in this post.
The prejudice I see exhibited by different Christian groups here in my little corner of the world is quite multi-faceted and is sometimes aimed at fellow Christians. I've touched on this in various ways in a number of other threads; isn't it a fact that many fundamentalist sects feel that
their own specific belief system is the one true belief system? This leads some of them to feel that members of other Christian faiths, even other fundamentalist faiths, are either somewhat astray from God, in which case they'd best be doing a lot of praying, or doomed to hell so that nothing they do short of converting to the other belief system can save them. Clearly, this is prejudice.
All through history we've seen prejudice from Christians, perhaps most notably toward Jews but also, again, toward one another. This internecine strife has led to civil wars, massacres, attempts at genocide, church-sanctioned torture and execution, etc., etc.
Today, at least in the western world, these struggles are more often fought within the structure of a larger political system, which can obviate the warfare that was once typical. But we still have the problem of religious prejudice. To give an example I used in another post: the Baptists think the Pentecostals are going to hell because they speak in tounges and the Pentecostals think the Baptists are going to hell because their women wear make-up.
Despite believing that most everyone outside one's faith is going to hell, fundamentalists show a remarkable ability to work with these infidels when it comes to a common goal: perpetuating prejudice within the larger culture. We see this in their efforts to prevent gay marriage today just as we saw it in the past in efforts to perpetuate slavery and/or segregation.
These types of prejudice seem to directly contradict the teachings of Jesus, and that's the point I want to get at in this thread. What did Jesus ever do to try to keep
anyone in their place? What did he ever do to try to segregate a minority? What did he do to set an example of feeling superior to others?
I supoose 'Faith and Belief' would be the appropriate place should this be promoted.
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